Chapter 1 Summary

Kurt Vonnegut tells the reader that he did actually know someone who was killed in Dresden for taking a teapot and he really did know someone who said he would hire gunmen to kill his enemies after the war. Moreover, he really did go back to Dresden after the war in 1967, thanks to Guggenheim money. He went back with his friend Bernard V. O'Hare. He met and befriended a taxi driver who took him to the slaughterhouse where he hid with other POWs during the Dresden bombing.

He says that is was not easy to write about the Dresden bombing, despite his best intentions. A friend asks Vonnegut if his book about the Dresden bombing will be an anti-war book. Vonnegut says yes. His friend replies, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?" (3)